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Tuesday of week 28 in Ordinary Time 
 or Saint Wilfrid, Bishop and Missionary 
 or Saint Hilda of Whitby, Abbess 

Using calendar: England - Nottingham. You can change this.

A mighty God is the Lord: come, let us adore him.

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 4. Liturgical Colour: Green.

St Wilfrid (634 - 709)

Wilfrid was born in Northumbria in 634. As a boy he was educated in the monastery of Lindisfarne. Later he travelled to Rome in the company of Benet Biscop, spending a considerable time at Lyons on the way. This wider, continental experience had a profound effect upon the young man and, on his return, he showed himself to have become a keen supporter of the traditions of the Roman Church as against the prevailing ‘Celtic’ customs introduced by the Irish missionaries from Iona under St Aidan. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Abbot of Ripon, and sometime later he was ordained priest.
  After the death of Aidan, the differing customs of the Romans and the Celts became the cause of bitter dispute. In 664 a Synod was held in Whitby, in the famous monastery of St Hilda, to settle the question and Wilfrid took a leading part in the debate, successfully arguing for the abolition of the Celtic traditions and the imposition of the church discipline of Rome.
  Within twelve months he had been appointed Bishop of Lindisfarne. He chose to be consecrated in Paris, and was absent in France for so long that St Chad, one of Aidan’s pupils, was consecrated bishop in his place. Wilfrid had to appeal to St Theodore of Canterbury, his metropolitan, before he was able to take possession of his diocese. He established himself at York, but encountered much hostility being opposed at various times not only by some of the secular rulers of his day but even by men of great sanctity like St John of Beverley. A particular dispute arose in 678 when Theodore made an attempt to divide the large, unwieldy diocese of Lindisfarne/York into two parts. Wilfrid objected to the division and made an appeal to Rome against his archbishop. Not only was he successful, but in doing so he became the first Englishman to take a law suit to the Roman courts.
  In spite of this, his return to Northumberland was much less successful. For a while he was imprisoned by the King of Northumbria and eventually escaped to Sussex. It is a tribute to his courage and dedication that he was able to use this time well, carrying on an energetic mission to the South Saxons and also for a brief period among the people of Friesland, so beginning the great English mission to the Germanic people that was to be continued by his pupil, St Willibrord.
  Wilfrid returned to Northumbria in 686, but was not allowed to remain long in the area. Once again he appealed in person to Rome. But in the end he accepted a compromise solution under which he became Bishop of Hexham while retaining his monastery at Ripon. There he introduced many additional Roman customs and reorganised the monastery under the rule of St Benedict. He died in 709.
Middlesbrough Ordo

St Hilda (614 - 680)

Saint Hilda (or Hild) was born in Northumbria in 614. She was the grandniece of King Edwin of Northumbria and was not baptised until the age of 13, when she was received into the Church by Paulinus at York, at the same time as King Edwin and many of his nobles.
  The first part of Hilda’s life was spent in the ordinary secular pursuits of the day. But these were years of constant warfare and in 655, her sister Hereswith, the wife of the King of the East Angles, suffered the loss of her husband in battle and decided to withdraw from the world to the monastery of Cale in Paris where she entered religious life. At the age of 33, Hilda decided to follow her and was only prevented from doing so by the intervention of St Aidan who directed her first to establish a small religious house on the north bank of the Wear where she stayed for a year, and then to take charge of the monastery of Hieu at Hartlepool. She proved to be an able and wise superior and, after several years at Hartlepool, she set about establishing the famous double monastery at Whitby which she governed for the rest of her life.
  Hilda was an extraordinary woman for her time. Her influence was widespread and her advice was valued by high and low alike. In her monastery she gave ‘a great example of peace and charity’, as Bede says ‘all who knew her called her mother, such were her wonderful godliness and grace.’ She laid emphasis on the study of the Scriptures and insisted on careful preparation for the priesthood, after the manner of St Aidan on Lindisfarne. Among her community was the first English poet, Caedmon, who had been the community’s herdsman until his poetic genius was discovered. After the death of St Aidan, when the divisions between those who held the Celtic tradition and those who supported Roman ways became critical, it was at her monastery that the important Synod of Whitby was held in 644 to decide upon a common Church order among the rival parties.
  Although her last seven years were a time of constant illness, she continued to lead her community to the end. Towards daybreak on 17 November 680 she asked for, and received, viaticum and died peacefully with her community around her or as St Bede says, ‘she joyfully saw death approaching… and passed from death to life.’
Middlesbrough Ordo

Other saints: Blessed Jan Beyzym (1850-1912)

Poland: 12 Oct
Madagascar: 3 Oct
Jan Beyzym (1850-1912) was born in Beyzymy Wielkie, which was then in the Russian-occupied Kingdom of Poland and is now in Ukraine. His father was sentenced to death for his part in the October Uprising of 1863. Jan entered the Jesuit novitiate at Stara Wieś in 1872. After his ordination as priest in 1881, he taught in schools for seventeen years, and was given charge of the school infirmary. In 1898, at the age of forty-eight, in response to his desires, he was appointed to Madagascar to work among lepers. He was the first priest in the mission to live among the lepers. He personally dressed and bandaged their wounds. He begged for finances to provide them with food and clothing. He raised funds to build a well-equipped hospital for them. The lepers called him “rayamendreny” — father and mother — which he truly was.

Other saints: Our Lady of Aparecida

Brazil
The statue of Our Lady of Aparecida has been venerated since it was found by fishermen in October 1717 after they had prayed to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. The statue was kept at the house of one of the fishermen for fifteen years, until the local parish priest had a chapel built for it. The devotion to Our Lady grew and the site attracted numerous pilgrims, so that the construction of a larger church was started in 1834: it was consecrated on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1888. Princess Elizabeth of Brazil visited the shrine in 1868 and, in 1888 she donated a golden crown and blue cloak for the statue in fulfilment of a vow.
  In 1894 Redemptorist missionaries arrived to the site to look after the many pilgrims who were coming to the shrine. In 1928 the locality was granted municipal status with the name “Aparecida”. A new basilica was started in 1955 and consecrated in 4 July 1980 by Pope John Paul II.
  Many miracles have been ascribed to the intercession of Our Lady of Aparecida.
  In 2007 the General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean held a conference at Aparecida whose concluding document, the “Aparecida Document”, has been the inspiration for a new flowering of the Church’s life in Latin America, especially where lay people and movements are concerned.

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: Saint Columbanus, Abbot (540? - 615)

Columbanus was born in Ireland before the middle of the sixth century. He was a monk from his youth and was learned in both sacred and secular literature. At the age of 45 he left Ireland and went to Europe, where he founded three monasteries in what is now France. His monastic rule was strict, based on Irish practice.
  King Thierry II of Burgundy had a veneration for Columbanus and often visited him. Columbanus’s criticisms of Thierry’s debauched living and practice of concubinage enraged the king’s grandmother Brunhild, and eventually Columbanus and all other Irish-born monks were ordered to be deported to Ireland. They eluded their captors, and after an unsuccessful attempt to evangelize the pagan tribes near modern-day Zürich they reached Italy, where Columbanus founded the monastery at Bobbio. He died there in 615.
  Columbanus’s writings are among the earliest evidence of Irish knowledge of Latin. His style combines an underlying passion with a strong and rhythmic rhetorical structure.

Liturgical colour: green

The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the orderly sequence of weeks through the year, a season in which we are being neither single-mindedly penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).

Mid-morning reading (Terce)1 John 3:17-18 ©
If a man who was rich enough in this world’s goods saw that one of his brothers was in need, but closed his heart to him, how could the love of God be living in him? My children, our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active.

Noon reading (Sext)Deuteronomy 30:11,14 ©
This Law that I enjoin on you today is not beyond your strength or beyond your reach. No, the Word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart for your observance.

Afternoon reading (None)Isaiah 55:10-11 ©
The word that goes out from my mouth does not return to me empty
Thus says the Lord: ‘As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.’

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Scripture readings taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.
 
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